Shit. That's another bit of freebie information I've given him. I feel like just taking off, but it's too late now. I'm intrigued. I have to know what he wants from me.
"My name's Chris," he says. "Chris Dennison, I work with Social Services."
"So?"
"I want to help you."
"Why?"
He shakes his head. "Christ, you have to ask that? We're in the middle of a war and the freaks are winning— isn't that enough of a reason?"
I think of the child waiting in the dark for a boogieman that's all too real to come into her bedroom. I think of the woman whose last bruises have yet to heal, thrown across the kitchen, kicked and beaten, I think of the boy, victimized since he was an infant, turning on those weaker than himself because that's all he knows, because that's the only way he can regain any kind of self-empowerment.
It's not a war, it's a slaughter. Fought not just physically, but in the soul as well! It's about the loss of innocence. The loss of dignity and self-respect.
"What is it that you do to them?" he asks.
I don't know how to explain it. Using the abilities with which the anima have gifted me, I could literally tear the monsters apart, doesn't matter how big and strong they are— or think they are. But I don't. Instead, I pay them back, tit for tat.
But how do I do it? I'm not sure myself. I just know that it works. I look at this Boy Scout standing there, waiting for an answer, but I don't think he's ready to hear what I have to say, how everyone has a dreaming place inside them, a secret, private place that defines them. It's what I learned from Annie's stories. I just put that knowledge to a different use than I think Annie ever would have imagined someone could.
"I turn them off," I say finally. "I go into their heads and just turn them off."
He looks confused and I don't blame him.
"But how?" he asks.
I can tell it's not just curiosity that's driving him. What he wants is a weapon for his war— one that's more efficient than any he's had to work with so far.
"It's too weird," I tell him.
"I'm not a stranger to weird shit."
I'm not sure I want to get into wherever that came from.
"How did you figure out that I existed?" I asked to change the subject.
He takes the bait.
"I started to notice a drop of activity in some of our more habitual offenders." he says. "You know, cases where we're trying to prove that there's good reason to make the child a ward of the court, but we're still building up the evidence?"
I didn't, but I gave him an encouraging nod.
"It was weird," he goes on. "I mean we get more recants than we do testimony anyway, but when I investigated these particular cases I found that the offenders really had changed. Completely. I didn't make any kind of a connection, though, until I was interviewing a six-year-old boy named Peter. His mother's boyfriend had been molesting him on a regular basis, and we were working on getting a court order to deny the man access to the child and his mother as a forerunner to hopefully laying some charges.
"The mother was working with us— she was scared to death, if you want the truth, and was grasping at straws. She claimed she'd do anything to get out of this relationship. And then she suddenly retracted her offer to testify. The boyfriend had changed. He was good as gold now. Peter confirmed it when I interviewed him. He was the one who told me that he'd quote, 'seen a ninja angel who'd stolen away all of the boyfriend's badness.' "
I remembered Peter. He'd come into the room and caught me as I was getting up from his mother's bed, putting on my gloves. I almost bolted, but I didn't want to leave a different kind of night fear in the little tyke's head, so I told him what I'd done, couching the information in words I thought he'd understand. He'd been really brave and hadn't cried at all.
"He said he'd keep the secret," I say.
"Give the kid a break. He's only six."
I nod.
"Anyway," Chris says, "something clicked for me then. It seemed... well, impossible, but I couldn't stop thinking about it. What if there really was someone out there that could do what Peter had said his angel had done? I've been fighting the freaks for years with hardly anything to show for it. It's heartbreaking work."
I nod again. I've got a hundred percent success rate myself, but there's only so many places I can be at one time. I know all about heartbreak.
"I felt like a fool walking around out here, trying to get your attention, but I just had to know. And if it was real, I wanted a part of it."
I think of the anima that came to me all those long months ago.
"It's not something that can be shared," I tell him.
"But I can help, can't I?"
"I don't think that's such a good—"
"Look," he breaks in. "How do you figure out who to hit? I'll bet you just skulk around outside windows, hoping to get lucky. Am I right?"
Too right, but I don't answer.
"I can provide you with names and addresses," he says.
I remember him saying hat earlier. It's part of what drew me down from the rooftops to hear him out.
"You won't have to waste your time guessing anymore," he goes on, voice so damn eager. "With what I give you, you can go right to the known offenders. Just think of how much more effective you can be."
It's tempting. Oh, who am I kidding? It's another gift, as unexpected, but as welcome, as those the anima gave me.
"Okay," I tell him. "We'll give it a try."
I barely get the words out of my mouth, then he's dragging a folded sheet of paper out of the pocket of his jacket.
"These are just some of the worst, ongoing situations that we've got on file," he begins.
My heart sinks. There must be fifty names and addresses on that one piece of paper.
So many monsters.
5
The relationship works better than I think it might. I was working blind before, hanging around on fire escapes and ledges outside windows, crawling down from rooftops, listening, watching, until I got a fix on one of the monsters. And even then I had to be careful. Not every domestic argument leads to spousal abuse. Not every child, crying in the lonely dark, has been molested.
I'm also careful with the tips I get from Chris. I may have taken on the roles of judge and jury, but I always make sure that I'm really dealing with a monster before I step into his head and turn him off. But Chris's information is usually good. We don't just use what he's collected on his own, either. He takes what we need from all the files in his office, his and the other caseworkers', as well as from Children's Aid and the like, to avoid suspicion falling on him the way it might if all the monsters I dealt with came from his caseload.
If Chris could make the connection, then so could someone else— someone perhaps not as sympathetic to my particular working methods. I've no idea how I'd deal with prison. I think the gifts of the anima would make it a thousand times worse for me. I think I'd rather die first.
A few weeks into our partnership, Chris asks me what got me started with all of this. I don't know what to say at first, but then I just tell him that I lost a good friend which leaves him with the impression that it's revenge motivating me. I let him believe that, even if it's not exactly true. What killed Annie isn't something anyone can fight against.
It's funny. I never think of Annie looking as she did when she died. It's like my mind's dosed off the image of how frail she became toward the end. She was just skin and bones, a pale, pale ghost of herself lying there in the hospital ward. Chemotherapy had stolen that gorgeous head of hair, but she refused to wear a wig.
"This is who I am now," is all she'd say.
When I think of her, I see instead the woman I fell in love with. She could have been a model for one of those nineteenth-century painters whose work she so admired: Rosetti, Burne-Jones, Dixon— that crew. She was beautiful, but more importantly to me, she completed me. Until I was with Annie, I never felt whole. I was just an observer going through life, never a participant, which might be the reason I became a journalist.